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Research

Julian’s research interests lie in five broad areas, each of which critically explore some aspect(s) of the complex and embedded relations between humans and the environment, whether mediated by institutions or social movement organizations, and the effects of this on public policy and planning processes and outcomes, particularly in relation to notions of justice and equity.

The five research areas below are illustrated with some of the key products of his research:

1 The nexus between the concepts of environmental justice and sustainability and, specifically, the possibility of ‘just sustainabilities’;

3 The potential in emerging discourses around ‘food justice/sovereignty’ to contribute to discourses around ‘just sustainabilities’;

How do just sustainabilities play out in food systems? His book co-edited with Alison Alkon, Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability (MIT Press 2011) provides an insight into the “relationships among food, environmentalism, justice, race, and identity [that] will help guide efforts to achieve a just and sustainable agriculture.” In Introducing Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice(Zed Books 2013) he devotes a chapter to exploring the fetishization of ‘the local‘ by arguing that “absent in much of the popular discourse surrounding local food systems, however, has been an explicit recognition of just sustainabilities concerns relating to the ability of people of color, immigrants, and low-income populations to produce, access, and consume healthy and culturally appropriate foods.”

In 2014, with former student Jesse McEntee, he published a paper: Moving the Field of Food Justice Forward Through the Lens of Urban Political Ecologyin whichthey argue that: “Food justice, through an urban political ecology lens, can shed light on the symptoms of unjust access to food within the food system, while simultaneously bringing attention to the insidious causes of these problems, which are rooted in the commodification of food and deregulation of the marketplace.” In February 2017, The Boston Globe published Trump spills the beans on who grows Americans’ foodin which he and his co-author argued “Trump’s policy goals may soon force Americans to confront the fact that we rely heavily on undocumented immigrants for more than half of our food labor supply. While these two topics are rarely linked in policy discussions, up to to 2 million of the people who pick our fruit and plant our crops are undocumented. They account for 50 to 70 percent of total US farm workers. Today’s food prices are artificially low because we use underpaid, overworked, unprotected labor.”

Another project asks “how do we build a more inclusive local food system from the ground up?” It uses placemaking and storytelling as a tool to challenge the dominant narratives of race, class, and sex in the food movement by bringing a multitude of voices to the table. Visit the developing project website at Urban Food Stories.

How should urban planning and urban planners respond to increasing difference in our cities? In a blog posting Cities of (in)Difference Julian outlines some of the key issues which are taken up in greater detail in Introducing Just Sustainabilities: Policy, Planning and Practice(Zed Books 2013)where he ponders: “the implications of culture, difference, and interculturalism, and how….the concept of just sustainabilities can help us recognize, understand, and engage difference, diversity, and cultural heterogeneity in inclusive, creative, and productive ways.” In this vein, inCulture, Recognition and the Negotiation of Difference: Some thoughts on Cultural Competency in Planning Education he and co-author, former student Jennifer Sien Erickson offer concrete suggestions as to how planning education should change to provide more culturally competent planners who see diversity as an advantage, not as a problem to be researched and ultimately managed. As our cities are increasingly different in human terms, they are also exhibiting greater ecological diversity. In Entering cosmopolis: Crossingover, hybridity, conciliation and the Intercultural City Ecosystem heargues that “urban cultures are increasingly hybrid, cross-fertilized, and cosmopolitan. This means greater difference, not only in human but also in ecological terms. Viewed in this way, the urban area becomes a socionatural system comprising a wide range of life forms, cultures, and possibilities: it becomes an intercultural city ecosystem.” His book Food Trucks, Cultural Identity, and Social Justice: From Loncheras to Lobsta Love (MIT Press 2017) asks what do we know and what can we learn about food truck roles in cultural identity formation amongst owners and users? How does this identity connect to the broader goal of social justice? What is, and could be the role of municipal policy/planning in their presence in cities?

5 The potential in sharing in cities to decrease inequality, increase social capital and to cut resource use.

How can the world’s cities, where the majority of people now live, become more socially just, more environmentally sustainable and more innovative through the 21st century reinvention and revival of one of our most basic traits: sharing? The most recent of Julian’s research foci, this interest began when he and Duncan McLaren were commissioned by Friends of the Earth in the UK to come up with an integrative urban theme for their ‘Big Ideas‘ project. The subsequent report, Sharing Cities, developed their interest further than could be encapsulated in a short publication so they approached MIT Press who enthusiastically accepted an expanded manuscript which was published as Sharing Cities: A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities in November 2015. An offshoot publication which garnered great international interest was Smart Cities Should Mean Sharing Cities in TIME Magazine in September 2014. In August 2016 The Boston Globe published Apps don’t make a city smartwhere he argued that “To be truly smart, cities of the future should focus on developing democratic, participatory visions that harness smart technology to a shared agenda. Let’s create a genuinely shared urban commons and an inclusive public realm — not a place where quick adoption of smart technologies just reinforces the dominant-yet-dumb approaches of competition, enclosure, and division.”